


All of My Heroes Sit Up Straight

by theshipsfirstmate



Series: We Need to Talk About Thea [2]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, post 4x05, we need to talk about thea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-10
Updated: 2015-11-10
Packaged: 2018-04-30 23:45:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5184242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theshipsfirstmate/pseuds/theshipsfirstmate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>post-4x05 Olicity. A little angsty.</p><p>"Oliver told her once how he’d been a bad sleeper since long before the island. Not like Thea, he had said. Thea could sleep through anything."</p>
            </blockquote>





	All of My Heroes Sit Up Straight

_A/N: post-4x05 Olicity. Sort of another installment in the “We Need to Talk About Thea” series that I started with “[To Use a Crane to Crush a Fly.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4957138)” Same vein. Because I kind of feel like everyone should be more worried about Thea Queen._

_Title from “[Second Chances](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2SABYGwH1I)” by Gregory Alan Isakov_

**All of My Heroes Sit Up Straight**

Oliver had been exhausted by the time they got back to the loft that night, could barely keep his eyes open even as he insisted on heating up some leftovers for both of them.

“You have to eat, Felicity,” he had grumbled when she protested, like she was a small child instead of a badass corporate CEO and master vigilante hacker. She gave him a pass, on account of the whole “leaving the realm of the living” thing.

“I…ate.” It wasn’t until the words had started to leave her mouth that she realized they were a lie. Because some days, _most days_ , all that hacking and badassery barely left time to breathe, and today had certainly been no exception.

“What did you eat?” He had asked, with a smile that told her he already had the answer, pulling a bowl from the microwave and setting it in front of her. She just scrunched her nose up, unable to stop the sigh when he leaned across the island to kiss it away.

He slouched against her as they ate in contented silence, perched on the barstools in the kitchen. The warm weight of him against her side wasn’t unwelcome at all, especially since the loft is always about ten degrees too cold (she blames the high ceilings), but she had realized just how tired he truly was when she was able to talk him into leaving the dishes in the sink for the morning, pulling him up the stairs with his fingers tangled in hers.

He had just barely crawled into bed behind her, tossing a lazy arm across her and dragging his thumb across that spot on her lower abdomen that makes her shiver just a little every time, when she felt his light snores start to rumble down the back of her neck.

He almost always falls asleep first, and she’d be lying if she said it didn’t thrill her a little every time.

* * *

Oliver told her once how he’d been a bad sleeper since long before the island. Not like Thea, he had said. Thea could sleep through anything.

Starting when he was nine or ten until well into his teens, he couldn’t sleep with the light off, then it was too bright. Closet doors had to be opened, then closed, glasses of water were requested, and half the time, knocked over. By the time a nanny or maid would get the routine down, it would change again. He told her a court-mandated therapist had once tried to explain to him how these patterns might be related to his predilection for downers. He had been half-tipsy for the session at the time, he admitted, but the lesson had resurfaced during the first restless nights he spent on Lian Yu, soggy and sober.

It’s so many stories rolled up into one, and the part that had hit Felicity square in the chest was the contrast to the memories of her own childhood. The worst part of growing up with a mom who worked nights was accidentally waking up before she got home, and Felicity had learned at too young an age how to talk herself down from a nightmare. Sometimes, she’d have to kill time with a book or a few dozen lines of code, but Donna always came home, and she always made it better, never scolded her for staying up or leaving all the lights in the apartment on. On particularly bad nights, her mother didn’t even bother taking her makeup off before she’d slide into bed behind her, squeezing her too tight for anything evil to grab away. Not even the stench of stale cigarette smoke could keep Felicity awake then.

It’s that same kind of safe, dreamless sleep that Oliver gets now, and it makes Felicity positively gleeful to think back to the first mornings of their trip, when he started making a game of asking her how late they had slept in, always accusing her of lying before turning to the clock, coming back to her with his eyes full of wonder and something even more.

He tries to give her the credit any chance he gets, and she always refuses, content to settle for feeling blessed each time she can sneak out of bed without his reflexes forcing him to vigilant consciousness. Every time he sleeps through a thunderstorm, she gives silent thanks, breathing softly through her nose and and trying not to let tears prick at her eyes when she recalls his memories of the first and last time his mother had tried to wake him from a nightmare.

* * *

Tonight, she knew he was exhausted in an other-worldly kind of way, so when she wakes up at 3 a.m. and he’s gone, her stomach does a one full somersault in panic, before her rational mind prevails. Thankfully, she doesn’t have to go far to find him. He’s perched out on the balcony, and she grabs a throw from the couch before she joins him

“Thinking about Sara?” In ninety-nine apartments out of a hundred, that question would be a firestarter, not gentle concern. She’s always been a happy outlier.

He turns to her, and even in the darkness of a night sky that hasn’t yet started to crack into early morning, she can see his sad, serious eyes. “Thea, actually.”

She hands him the blanket absently and he pulls it over his shoulders before wrapping her in his arms, cocooning them in. It’s warm and protected and just a little bit nostalgic. She wishes she were eight feet tall, so she could wrap him up the same way.

“Laurel doesn’t think she’s sleeping.” Even if she didn’t know better, the despondency in his voice would tell her how bad he thinks that is. “She thinks it’s getting worse.”

A thought hits her then, something that definitely should have occurred to her sooner. Either she’s getting slow, or their troubles are getting heavier.

“I didn’t even think of it… do you think John could help her with…?” She can’t use the term “blood lust” to describe his little sister, with her big, expressive eyes and pixie cut that had bobbed with excitement like a kid on Christmas when they showed her the new lair. She’s seen Thea’s violence in action, and she still can’t say it.

“I don’t think so.” He sounds resigned. Apparently the thought had already occurred to him. “Besides, Laurel was right. I’m not the only one who gets to save my sister.”

“I don’t think she meant it to call you selfish,” Felicity assures him. She wasn’t there for the encounter, but she’s fairly certain she knows the both of them, and the stubborn yet admirable loyalty they share, well enough to picture how that conversation went. If nothing else, she can feel the weight of the guilt that it’s heaped on his shoulders, the tension that’s still threaded up his spine, not allowing him to relax around her.

“You carry so many people around with you, Oliver,” she tells him gently, when he stays silent. “You’ll do anything for your family, but that includes so many people…”

“My father died for me. My mother died because of me,” he interrupts suddenly, and she’s too stricken to be annoyed. When she tries to look back at him, his eyes are fixed on the barely-visible skyline. “All I ever wanted was for Thea to live, in spite of me.”

“She’s alive because of you, Oliver,” she reminds him, again. “You saved her, just like you’ve saved us all.”

“Seeing her in the campaign office, it almost makes me…” he trails off with a shake of his head, clearing his throat before he can continue. “She reminds me so much of my mother.”

From anyone else, this might sound like nostalgia, melancholy, maybe a little bit of heartache. From Oliver Queen, who’s watched each member of his nuclear family die in front of his eyes, it’s a different world of hurt.

“She’d be proud of both of you.” Felicity winces at the words as they escape her, because they sound like a platitude. But, in a moment, she realizes they’re true. “And if she wasn’t, well, I would have made her.”

At that, she finally feels him relax, can almost feel his grin press against her hair when he tells her, simply, “I love you.”

She turns to face him then, as much as she can while tangled up in arms and blankets. He dips his head to meet her eyes when she returns his words, and the action alone says a million unspoken words about how far they’ve come together.

“I never thought I’d be able to do that again,” he tells her softly, almost whispering. “When I came back, I didn’t think I’d be able to care about people like that anymore.”

“I’m sure you never stopped.” She’s very nearly breathless at the look in his eyes.

“I thought I had,” he admits, never breaking eye contact even as he gives a reflexive, emphatic little nod. “You helped prove me wrong, you know, you and John. You were the first new people I formed any kind of attachment to.”

“Well, we’re pretty irresistible, the two of us,” she grins, attempting to lighten the mood just a little, fearful they might get swallowed up by the black night sky and the vast expanse of things that went unsaid for too long.

“I didn’t want to.” He ignores her teasing tones, his words come low and solemn like a confession. “I didn’t want anything bad to happen to you.”

“You fought it for so long,” she concedes, finally matching his seriousness. “But you were ignoring one thing.”

“What?”

“Nothing bad was going to happen to me because of you,” she tells him earnestly. It’s not hard, she’s believed it for years. “You’re the best thing that’s happened to me”

He blinks hard, once, then kisses her deep and she settles back, content just to hold him and be held, until one unanswered question keeps nagging at her brain.

“Are you certain John couldn’t help Thea with her…side-effects?”

“It’s not really an on-demand service, Felicity,” his tone doesn’t hold an anger, in fact, it tells her just how much he’s considered it. When he meets her eyes again, his are serious, but tinged with something like gratitude. “He owed me a favor, it’s kind of a one time thing.”

How he can admit that, casually toss out that he’d given his one last great hope to the Lance family with barely a thought, and still call himself selfish in the same conversation is beyond her. Some days, Felicity thinks, Oliver Queen needs a cheerleader. Some days, he just needs a good mirror.

“He just can’t…” Oliver’s voice chokes with emotion as he casts one last look at the city before tugging at her hand to pull her back inside, and she knows his thoughts have gone somewhere else. “He just can’t go around saving everybody’s soul, whenever he wants…”

“Well then,” she resolves, pulling him back to her for just one more moment, “we’ll just have to do it the old-fashioned way.”


End file.
